January 05, 2005

Gender Wage Gap

Hm, it seems that the gender wage gap is continuing to shrink. Which would be welcome news, but it mainly seems to be the result of a shrinking manufacturing base—which tends to be male-dominated. Meanwhile, female-dominated industries like health care continue to expand. So is this a good thing or a bad thing? Ideally, I think, we'd like to see the wage gap shrink because a) women were entering male-dominated industries in greater numbers and, b) the wage gap within individual industries was shrinking. But is any gender wage gap shrinking welcome news?